Saturday, March 7, 2015

Poe 1974, Pt.17

7 months after their last POE adaptation, Warren Publications did it again.
I believe at this point, Skywald was in deep trouble due to Marvel Comics deliberately sabotaging their distribution, and it wouldn't be too much longer before they were gone. As with "The Black Cat", in this case, Warren did a Poe story that Skywald hadn't done yet, but would soon...

The art for this was by one of the great MASTERS of horror comics art, Richard Corben. He's been around since the 1960s, and has done work
in the "undergrounds", various U.S. publishers, HEAVY METAL, self-published under his own company, Fantagor, and is even now currently at work on an entire series of new Poe adaptations from Dark Horse!!! And this was his 1st. He's teamed with Richard Margopoulos, who did a ton of work for Warren,
and has been one of Corben's longtime collaborators.

This version of the story has proven so popular, it has been reprinted several times-- starting with an issue of Warren's all-reprint COMIX INTERNATIONAL, a magazine that tended to re-present their B&W stories in color. Legend has it Jim Warren heard that Marvel's publisher was planning to do a magazine with that name, and deliberately beat him to the punch, just to "stick it" to him for all the problems he was causing Warren with distribution by flooding the newsstand shelves with 2nd-rate material.

Here we have the 1st of 5 reprint collections using the same cover (more or less). This book collects 15 various Warren POE stories by a variety of artists.
I guess it says something that they decided to use Corben art for the cover!

The American version is apparently a much thinner book, as it ONLY contains Corben material! This includes his version of "House Of Usher" (which, ironically, considering the cover, the previous versions do not), originally published by Pacific Comics, I believe, after Warren went belly-up. (More when we get to that one.)EDGAR ALLAN POEcover by RICHARD CORBEN (Catalan Communications / September 1985)

It looks to me like this later German book reprints the American all-Corben collection, but, inexplicably, with a brand-NEW, non-Corben cover based on Corben's painting! WHAT th'...?? (Go figure.)

This reprint collection was available in 2 editions.
This hardcover was a limited edition of 5,000 copies.HEAVY METAL: THE BEST OF RICHARD CORBEN SPECIAL
cover by RICHARD CORBEN (HM Communications / January 1998)

And just for variety, here's a collection of ALL of Corben's work for Warren,
only 3 stories of which were actually POE-related.

Scan of CREEPY #67 from the Heritage Auuctions site.
Scans of CREEPY #67 interiors from The Golden Age blog.
Scan of COMICS INTERNATIONAL #2 from the Heritage Auction site.
Scan of CREEPY #25 (France) from eBay.
Scan of CREEPY RINDE TRIBUTO A EDGAR ALLAN POE
from the Whakoom.com site.
Scan of EDGAR POE from the Mexifast.com site.
Scan of EDGAR POE interior page from the Monster Magazine World blog.
Scans of the CREEPY SPECIAL from the Catawiki.com site.
Scan of the Catalan EDGAR ALLAN POE from my collection.
Scan of GESPENSTER-GESCHICHTEN Prasentiert: #4 Edgar Allan Poe
from the GCD site.
Scan of HEAVY METAL: THE BEST OF RICHARD CORBEN SPECIAL
from the My Comics Shop site.
Scan of CREEPY PRESENTS RICHARD CORBEN from the GCD site.
Scan of CREEPY ARCHIVES VOLUME FOURTEEN from the GCD site.

Read about James Warren at Wikipedia.
Read about Warren Publishing at Wikipedia.
Read about Richard Margopoulos at Wikipedia.
Read about Richard Corben at Wikipedia.
Read about Semic Press at Wikipedia.
Read about Dark Horse Comics at Wikipedia.